Grey Sky Morning
by Starlightlovesya123
Summary: Damian isn't the type of man who gets afraid. He's been trained like a machine, automatic and controlled, made for murder and destruction. But this? This absolutely terrifies him. Spin-off of NDND.
1. Part 1: Wrong Choice

Stephanie's playing with the cars again.

Damian watches her dubiously, as she takes one of the miniature Hot Wheels and rolls it over the great expanse of her stomach. She pushes it slowly, pressing the little tires down into her shirt, so that she can feel them against her skin. Damian knows this, because she never stops babbling about how funny it would be if the baby could hear the sound of tires running over top of her.

"I need a shirt," Stephanie contemplates, as she chases a Corvette up and over her belly. "One that has a racecar track on it. Like those mats that toddlers play with? I need one of those. Just in shirt form."

"Mmhmm. I'll get right on that," Damian replies dryly, scrolling through several different feeds on his laptop. He rests his cheek on his elbow, propped up on the hospital nightstand.

It's a grey, usual morning, dotted with storm clouds that won't ever release their burden. Damian's looking at crime statistics, bothered that he can't be back home, at the Cave. He doesn't like being away for this long. It's been three days, stuck in a tiny hospital that smells like antiseptic and urine, an odd and unappetizing combination.

"I'm just sayin'," Stephanie replies, shrugging.

"Yes, you 'just say' quite a bit."

She stops driving the car along the fold of her blouse and gives him a look. "Oh, great, you're grumpy. It must be Monday. Or Thursday." She holds up a hand and starts counting off the fingers. "Or I guess it could be Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Christmas, Halloween, perhaps even Easter—"

"You're downright hilarious," he cuts in sarcastically, tapping the space bar and then closing the laptop. He turns to her, his hands in his sweatpants pockets.

Only in a hospital would he allow himself to look this casual. And only for Stephanie. For some reason, she likes his ruffled hair and t-shirt, the slight smudge of her lipstick against the dark-toned skin of his cheek. It's something he'll never fully understand. But she's easier to be around when she's happy. Mood swings are, unfortunately, a far too common occurrence with the pregnant klutz of a Bat.

"Move," he tells her, and she begrudgingly adjusts her enormous frame, allowing him room on the bed.

He climbs in, gently putting an arm around her shoulders as she lets out a relaxed sigh. He cranes his neck, lets her move her head so that it rests against his chest.

"How are you feeling?" he asks, his voice muffled by her thick, messy hair.

"Just fine and dandy," she replies cheerfully, placing the Hot Wheels to the side and welcoming his presence. "Hotshot here," she jerks her head towards her stomach, "decided it might be a good idea to settle down."

"She's a girl, Stephanie," he reminds her, as if she weren't aware of her own child's gender. "You can't keep calling her 'hotshot'."

"Sure I can. 'Specially if she turns out half as badass as I think she'll be."

Damian snorts in spite of himself. Of course Stephanie would call their unborn daughter, of whom they've only seen ultrasounds and sonograms, a badass.

It is a somewhat accurate title, however. The little girl hasn't even been born yet and she's caused as much trouble as a kid in their Terrible Twos.

There were the obvious, beginning problems—announcing Stephanie's pregnancy, confirming the relationship between her and Damian, explaining it all to the rest of the Bat family.

But then there were the unforeseen complications. Stephanie going into premature labor, calling Damian from halfway around the world—where he was attempting to settle business with his mother—telling him to come, media and paparazzi interference, so on and so forth that led them to this dinky Gotham hospital. After some magnesium sulfate and other medications that Damian wasn't allowed to monitor, Stephanie was ordered to bed rest at the hospital until she could go home again.

Damian is no pregnancy expert and doesn't particularly want to be one. But the whole thing makes him uneasy, lying in a too-hard bed with his pregnant partner and too many possibilities, too many fears, too many factors out of his control.

And the tiny object in his right pocket keeps burning against his leg, a nagging reminder. _I'm still here, you know. Don't you dare forget about me. This is important. _

He instinctively places a hand over the small lump, pushing it to the back of his mind. _Best not worry about it now, _he thinks. There are other concerns—greater concerns—at the moment. Gotham, his father, Stephanie, the baby. The baby that's been making his sleep even more restless than usual.

There are very few things that Damian actively worries about, because Damian's been trained like a machine. A machine is automatic, controlled. It knows just what to do with the parts it's been assigned. So when Damian's thrown an extra part or two, things start going haywire.

A baby, a little girl who he'll have the pressure of cleaning, feeding, changing, walking, teaching, and talking to. A little girl who he will have to raise, and raise well. And, God knows, Damian's never even dreamed of being a father before all this. It's not like he's had the best role model.

Frowning, he watches as Stephanie leans over him and grabs at her backpack, which is several inches out of her reach. After a few moments of struggling—where she whips her arm around like a noodle and strains her fingers forward—she throws him a nasty look.

"Care to help your pregnant lady friend?" she asks, her voice dripping sarcasm that challenges even his own.

He can't keep a small smirk from erasing the frown on his lips. Damian's always found Stephanie impeccably entertaining when she's irritable. Which is perhaps why he called her "Fatgirl" for so long. Of course, that nickname dropped after he found out she was pregnant—now that she was actually going to _be _"fat", or at least quite a bit bigger, the joke didn't seem appropriate. But that didn't mean he stopped getting a kick out of her midnight snack trips. She would lean over the refrigerator drawer and snarl about how cheese was too damn addicting, while he tried desperately not to grin.

He reaches over, lifting the pack with one arm and bringing it over to her side of the bed. Snatching it out of his hand—or rather, _trying_ to snatch it (his grip is a little stronger than her noodle-armed pull)—she starts digging through the front pocket. After a moment, she pulls out a slender disk in a plain manila envelope, and holds it with her lips while she repacks and re-zips the bag.

"What's that?" Damian asks.

"It's a DVD. Put it in," she orders, but she's smiling.

"Excellent," he mutters, as he slowly lifts himself out of the bed and walks to the hospital room TV set. A lousy DVD player sits on one of the coffee-stained shelves, next to a wadded-up newspaper and a pair of Stephanie's socks.

He rolls his eyes. The ridiculous woman has been here less than three days, and she's already turned it into her personal trash yard.

He slips the disk out of the envelope and finds that it's unlabeled, looking like a typical blank CD. He looks back over his shoulder at Stephanie and asks, "What is this?"

She winks.

His eyes narrow. "Another one of your torturous romantic comedies? Where the man and woman spend the entire movie loathing one another, but, after some witty banter, decide upon sexual intercourse in the end?"

His partner throws her head back and laughs. "Nah, not quite. Just put it in, D."

Fighting the urge to sigh or make another rude comment, he puts the disc in the player and walks back to the bed.

"I will never know why I allow you to do this," he tells her, punching the power button on the remote. "I don't believe I have _ever _decided what movie we are to watch. Instead, I let you manipulate me into watching Scarlett O'Hara chase an unattractive man about the Southern plantations, when we could easily be watching something with a far greater educational value to our future."

"What, like _The Godfather_?" Stephanie asks dryly. "I know what you men are like with your movies. And don't hate on _Gone With the Wind, _it's a classic." She takes a self-satisfied bite of the apple she's pulled out of her bag, another one of her pregnancy snacks.

Damian snorts. "Classic or no classic, it took the God-forsaken woman an entire 3 hour and 44 minute movie to figure out the 'right' man was the one she'd been married to for years. Why you women find that 'romantic', I will never understand."

"You're a guy, you're not supposed to understand," she points out. She shows no hint of surprise that he remembers exactly how long the movie was. Instead, she throws a pillow at his face before he can say another word. "Now. Shut up and watch the pretty animated coral."

"Pretty animated _what?" _He moves the pillow out of his way and lets his eyes find the television screen, where an all-too-familiar Disney castle is lighting up in front of a blue background.

_Ohh, no. _

Damian remembers this Disney castle, alighting before a different movie. In this movie, there was a little baby lion, with startling yellow eyes, nudging the corpse of his dead father. Begging dear old Dad to "wake up." Wake up and smell the coffee, Dad, you're supposed to be teaching me things. Helping me. Not lying here in the middle of a gorge, your chest frozen in place, no longer lifting and falling with the rhythm of your heartbeat.

_You said you'd always be there for me. But you're not. And it's my fault._

_It's my fault._

The movie was _The Lion King, _a ridiculous number about talking lions that sang and danced and acted like real people with real feelings. Stephanie had shown the movie to Damian on one of their nights at home, probably trying to get a reaction out of him. Trying to teach him something about his own relationship with his father. His father, the all-powerful, eminent teacher, the great and wise sage. The Batman. Who was taken down by a single bullet.

Such a simple, almost pathetic death. Over in an instant.

An instant that shook Damian to the bone, rattled him to the core, surprising him with how much it _hurt._

Damian Wayne was a man generally unsusceptible to pain—he took bullet wounds and gashes like they came with his breakfast. But watching his father bleed to death—because of a .308 Winchester bullet—snapped something inside of him, something he hadn't known existed. It wasn't like a bone fracture or a torn ligament. Ligaments and fractures could be mended physically, with tools and careful instruction. But this new pain was something Damian couldn't locate, something he couldn't fix. He just had to deal with it.

And, for that reason, Damian understood little Simba better than he cared to admit.

So when the Disney logo appears on the hospital room's television screen, he can't help a creeping sense of dread from plucking at his spine.

Not again. Not more psychological analogies provided by meerkats that walk on two feet and warthogs with immature flatulence issues.

But when he glances over at Stephanie, she's smiling at him. An odd smile, full of a gentle fondness. Like she's looking at a child. It warms her face and makes her pallid skin look a little rosier, so he decides not to say anything. If she's happy, he can at least try to be.

"So what is this one about?" he asks. "I've seen talking lions, talking dogs—"

"Talking fish," Stephanie interrupts happily, and hugs a pillow to her chest. "Now shh."

"Oh, talking fish. Much better. Perfectly reasonable," Damian says, but he leans against the headboard and lets her rest against his side again.

The movie starts simply enough. A deep blue ocean spotted by groups of, as Stephanie put it, "pretty animated coral."

The camera flows through this scene, capturing little fish that zip through bright flashes of color. Eventually, it settles upon a little blob of pink, a group of coral that sways back and forth with the tide. Out of this blob of pink comes a pair of clownfish. And, as Damian expected, they start talking.

The female clownfish is, creatively enough, named "Coral." She has no defining female characteristics that Damian can see—besides an overly annoyed tone of voice that may hint she's pre-menstrual—but Damian decides he'd better not mention it. Coral's mate has been blessed with the ever-so-masculine title of "Marlin," and is trying to convince Coral that "the drop-off" is the perfect home. Damian sees little appeal in it himself—it's far too open and flamboyant for a reasonable Bat abode—but Marlin seems perfectly pleased with it.

After some pointless dialogue, Coral and Marlin swim down to a little sea cave, in which about four hundred tiny red eggs are settled, each one touching another and quivering in the dim lighting. The clown fish coo over these dots for several minutes, fantasizing about their future parenthood. In the midst of this, Damian can't help but glance down at Stephanie.

She's watching the movie with her lips pressed in a tight smile. She's planning something with this, testing the waters a bit; he knows it. Just like she did with _The Lion King._

His eyes waver over the balloon of her stomach.

There's a little fighter in there. A bouncing baby girl, who shares his DNA and his characteristics, shares his blood and his secrets.

A bouncing baby girl who is only human, just like Damian's father. Just like Damian himself.

This thought brings an unwelcome flash of pain through his chest. He forces it away with a considerable amount of effort—it's like he has to literally lift a weight off his heart.

_Pathetic. _

His attention is called away from Stephanie's pregnant belly by an abrupt silence, courtesy of the movie_. _The clownfish duo have suddenly stopped talking, and are sitting motionless in the water.

It's at this point that Damian starts to actually pay attention. He isn't sure _why_ exactly—why should he care about the emotional preoccupations of anthropomorphic sea creatures?—but something tells him it's time to listen up. Indulge Stephanie.

_This is important._

The slender object in Damian's pocket brushes against his leg again, as he focuses in on the television screen.

_Don't miss this chance._

There's a barracuda. It's lurking in the open water, staring back at the clownfish with teeth like knives and cold-blooded killer's eyes.

Damian knows those eyes. He's seen them a million times before, on the face of the Joker, Bane, Kobra, Scarecrow, Penguin, Croc, Black Mask, _Zsasz. _His own mother was a murderess, and she had often encouraged him to be the same.

Death came to him so naturally. It was an aspect of his life that he accepted without question, without challenge. He took it as one takes a bittersweet pill every morning, knowing that another day of training with his mother would bring newly spilled blood and freshly burned tissue. First was Sunnat, his young Middle Eastern friend, who was Damian's beginning test. It was absolutely vulgar, forcing Damian to kill the first true acquaintance of his childhood. But it got easier after that time. Slashing throats and breaking bones became second-nature, and devilish tendencies seemed like good instincts to follow.

But Stephanie changed that. She caught him one night, many years later, after he'd killed a man in cold blood. He hated her at the time, as he hated most people who got in his way and made life more of a challenge than it already was. But Batwoman slowly showed him a different path. A path filled with cheap, store-bought ice cream and Oreos dunked in 2% milk. A path overflowing with irksome quips and galling explanations, self-control and foolish kisses. A path that didn't belong to Batman or the Al Ghul heir, but it belonged to Damian and Stephanie and that was what mattered.

So watching death yet again, even in the faded screen of a 20-year-old hospital television set, makes him clench his fists. Because he understands only too well.

In the movie, Marlin is desperately whispering to Coral, trying to get her back into the anemone-house, and out of harm's way. But Coral keeps glancing down at the eggs, keeps ignoring Marlin.

Then things move rather quickly. Damian isn't surprised—death is always so much faster than people expect.

Coral dives downward. The barracuda reacts, slicing after her through the open water, and Marlin charges forward, crying out. There are brief flashes of knocking skulls and striking fins, and then Marlin is thrown backward, stung by the anemone. All goes dark.

Silence.

Stephanie's hand is absently stroking Damian's knee. An ever-present comfort, even though he needs no comforting. This is obviously not his first experience with death, and Stephanie knows that even better than most people. And this is a child's film, for God's sake.

Still. He doesn't want her to stop.

Marlin wakes and it's just as Damian expects. The lighting is dark, the ocean quiet, softly drifting back and forth in a sad rhythm. Marlin is gasping for Coral, swimming in circles, but of course she's nowhere to be found. And the eggs are gone as well.

Marlin floats into the tiny cave, trembling with emotion, his breath coming out in ragged gulps. It's strange, how oddly natural these tremors look and sound, considering he's nothing more than a decrepit fish.

Stephanie's hand has stopped moving against Damian. But he can still feel its warmth, the soft skin of her palm, the calluses healed now that she's taken a maternity leave from crime-fighting. He breathes slowly, deeply, watching as Marlin starts to back out of the cave.

And then something catches the fish's eye.

It's just a glimmer. Could have been easily missed, really. A little speck of red hiding near a rock, partially buried in the sand.

Marlin drifts over to it, slowly takes it into his fins.

It's one of the eggs, of course. The only one left. A tiny thing, crimson, like blood, concealing and protecting the shaking shape of a premature fish. There's a jagged etch along the surface of the egg, scarring the translucence.

"_It's okay," _Marlin whispers_. "Daddy's here, Daddy's got you. I promise I won't ever let anything happen to you. Nemo." _

And, for a moment, Damian and Stephanie are again met by silence.

The rest of the movie passes by in a rush. It's an explosion of one-liners and stupid jokes and tugs at the heartstrings, provided by a neurotic father, a socially-reformed shark, and a mentally unstable Blue Tang. Stephanie smirks and giggles at all the right moments, chewing on her fingernails and smiling as she recognizes every heart-warming moment of the movie. Damian watches her face, as it melts from laughing to distraught, surprised to whimsical, in perfect timing with every second of every scene.

She's such a strange combination of woman and child. Both literally and figuratively.

He's enchanted by her. As if she isn't quite real. Like she's a storybook creature, a nymph or a princess or a talking fish in an animated feature. Something he can hear, taste, smell, but can't quite touch. Even if her hand is still resting against him—it feels separate, somehow. Special.

He takes a step back from his thoughts and nearly groans aloud. The insufferable wench is turning him into a right _sap_.

She falls asleep before the movie is over, right after Marlin is finally reunited with his son. Her breathing evens, her enormous stomach rising and falling gently, pulling the bed sheets up and down with it. Her lips are slightly open, her eyelashes brushing the skin beneath her eyes.

"Next time I'll have to show you _Up_," she mumbles, before she completely drifts off.

Before long, she's snoring like an old man.

He sits with her for the better half of two hours, sitting and thinking, his right hand absently moving through the great nest of her hair. He only stops when the laptop on the table stirs, beeping and coming automatically to life.

Slowly adjusting Stephanie's head, he slips off of the mattress and onto the cool linoleum.

He checks the time. 2 in the morning.

He isn't tired. Stephanie is asleep, Stephanie is safe, the baby is asleep, the baby is safe. The hospital, however dinky Damian finds it, is a good one. The nurses come at regular intervals, checking on any changed conditions. No one but Tim and Cass know that Stephanie is even here.

And Gotham is calling.

He has a decision to make. And, oddly, it feels like déjà vu.

When has he made this choice before? When did he make the wrong decision?

Go to Gotham, or Stay with Stephanie? It's like a reality TV show for lunatic vigilantes. Pick your best bet, folks! Give it a spin!

Stephanie's fine, Damian tells himself. The baby isn't supposed to come for another few weeks, now that the preterm labor has been stopped. Stephanie will be allowed to come home in a few days, and all will be well.

He swallows, hating the creeping doubt, the unusual anxiety, the conflict caused by the angel on the mattress.

It's been three days since he last went on patrol. Gotham needs him. He can get out his impatience, his frustration, with a few quick snaps of the fist. Save a few lives while he's at it.

It's what his father would have done.

He nods. Yes. It's what Bruce would have done, and thus Damian should do it too. After all, he is the Bat now. The only real Bat left, the only one right for the job. Jason Todd is too unstable, Cassandra too unpredictable, Drake too much of an immature child, Barbara too insolent, and Dick too…_gone_. Disappeared into the winter wind.

Damian unfolds a small piece of stationary from the side pocket of his laptop case, and scrawls a letter to Stephanie.

_I apologize for leaving without telling you, but I didn't wish to wake you. I should be back before 5 this morning, in case you wake before then. I highly doubt that, considering your usual habits, but I thought I would tell you nevertheless. Please alert me if anything is to go wrong; the comm link will be hooked up all night, should you need me. _

He pauses, then adds:

_I love you._

_-D_

He feels better. At least now she won't worry about him. And he will stay true to his word. Only a few hours of patrolling. And only simple things—no cracking a mob boss tonight. Maybe stop a few bar fights or a robbery. Check out the Hadler case, the ten-year-old girl who went missing two weeks ago. Keep it light.

He walks over to the corner of the hospital room and picks up the small duffel bag he uses for occasions such as these. He unzips the bag and pulls out Dick's old Batsuit—the light grey one with the thinner material, fitted specifically for Dick's agile figure. It's not nearly as reinforced as Damian's father's costume, but it'll do for a bit of low-tech reconnaissance work.

And, besides, it reminds Damian of Dick. Hell, it _smells _like Dick. Brand-name cologne, sweat, Men's Speed Stick deodorant (or something similar), lotion—Dick's hands always got cracked underneath the material of Bruce's gloves—and the sharp tang of the glue the men used to fixate their masks.

It's been years since Dick disappeared, and the suit still smells like him.

Thinking of Dick reminds Damian of the small object he left in his sweatpants pocket. Carefully, he steps around Stephanie's bed and grabs the pants, removing the object from the lint-free pocket (Damian does all the laundry in this family, not Stephanie) and secures it in his utility belt.

Much better. Dick would approve.

He leaves through the window, following Bat tradition, and stops to take one glance back at Stephanie. Her face is towards him—he can see the scar running up her left cheek, faintly illuminated by moonlight.

He breathes a sigh, and drops into the night.

* * *

><p>It seems that, no matter how many years pass, Gotham never really changes. It was crisp last night, it's crisp tonight. Alive, and eating at its people with jaws that are never satisfied.<p>

But Batman will keep feeding it. As per the orders of Bruce Wayne.

There's an unusual amount of adrenaline running through Damian's veins tonight, highlighting his muscles, striking a match to every nerve. He whips about the city like a spark from a lighter, a wisp through the trees, his every move picture perfect. The cape snaps behind him, following the shifts and changes of his body, as he moves from rooftop to wall to sky to street.

He is the spitting image of his father.

The city is a thrumming instrument beneath his feet, the cool September air a razor against his exposed skin. He flies over a flashing police car, a sight to see.

And then he stops.

He's in an alley, not unlike the one where his grandparents were shot and murdered. The cape settles around his feet as he takes quiet steps forward, surveying the area, which he knows to often be rigged with drug dealers and junkies searching for a late-night fix.

Instead, he finds a man sitting against a crate.

Damian stays in the shadows, as is only natural. He only recognizes the man after using his father's cowl to enlarge the man's face, peering at the scars which claw about his neck.

It's _Zsasz._

Hot anger flashes through him like wildfire, while also cooling every tendon into something like metal, like steel.

And he doesn't know _why. _

Sure, Zsasz is a relentless, perverse, undeserving creature, belonging in Arkham with the rest of the insane animals, but no one incites this kind of reaction from Damian. _No_ one. Not unless they've recently done something. And Damian hasn't seen Zsasz in months.

Still, every organ in his body screams at him to _attack. _No holds barred. _Attack._

But, before he can, the man speaks.

"Batman. I was hoping you might come."

Zsasz sounds genuinely pleased, if it is possible for him to feel such emotion. How he knows that Damian is in the shadows is another question. It's as if he _sensed_ him.

Damian says nothing, but his lips stretch into a snarl. He has to squeeze his fingers into fists to keep them from reaching out and grabbing Zsasz, strangling him within an inch of his life.

It's been a while since this kind of violence has been desired by Damian, offspring of Talia, son of the Bat.

"So you made your decision." Zsasz's voice is a serpentine hiss, combined with the reasoning tone of a middle-aged man. "This is the second time in a row, Batman. History is repeating itself yet again, I'm sorry to say."

Silence. Damian has no idea what the maniac is talking about.

When Batman doesn't reply, Zsasz decides to give a hint. He continues to lean against the crate, staring at nothing in particular, but he raises an eyebrow. "The girl? This is the second time you've left the girl on her own, knowing that you should have stayed." He wags his finger mockingly. "You really should learn to follow gut instincts, Batman. They're a gift, trust me."

Damian allows a Batarang to slip into his glove.

Zsasz is talking about Stephanie. Zsasz _knows _about Stephanie.

But what is he _talking _about? When has Damian left Stephanie before? And how could Victor Zsasz know about it?

"Hush for a moment," Zsasz says ironically, seeing as Damian has yet to say a word. The man finally stands up, placing his hand on the crate. A sudden gust of wind blows the hat off of his head, and the bald skin underneath is revealed, lined with hatch marks. Slowly, he turns and points down the alleyway. "Now, tell me what you see."

Damian's eyes narrow, but he follows the line of Zsasz's arm across the street. There, leaning against a concrete wall, is a girl.

She's around 5'8", a pale Caucasian, medium build. Very American. Long blonde hair, neck hidden by a purple scarf—one that's wrapped just a little too tight, meaning it's hiding something. Grey, suede boots cover thin, muscular legs. Her arms are pressed around her body as she bundles against the slight chill of the evening.

Damian would recognize Stephanie anywhere.

A startled call rises up in his throat and he has to force it back down—he's in the field now, and can't risk revealing his identity or Stephanie's.

But what in the _HELL _is she doing out here?

"So, what do you see?" Zsasz asks calmly, his arm still raised and pointing, covered in its menagerie of hatch marks.

In his hysterics, Damian almost misses the fresh scab that's budding across Zsasz's forearm. A long, uneven one—cut with a bad knife, from the looks of it, but with a surprising amount of vigor.

Damian's eyes flash back to Stephanie and everything suddenly clicks. Zsasz, being here. Stephanie, standing in the street. The new hatch mark, with its thin line of blood trickling down like a sliver of canine drool.

"_NO!" _he bellows, losing every ounce of remaining power over his body.

Stephanie is the one constant in his life. And being the walking, breathing paradox she is, that constant has turned his life upside down. She's the one thing that breaks his control, that makes him feel something other than the iron-hide teachings of his father, his mother, his _blood_. Everything is so different with her.

And that's why he _needs _her.

He leaps at the exact moment Zsasz does. His legs propel him forward and he's slammed himself into Zsasz with absolutely no mercy. He hears the satisfying crack of rib beneath the arch of his foot. His fist brings blood on the first blow. Then he takes off.

He doesn't even turn to see if Zsasz is still running—the glint of a knife in the moonlight sends him into overdrive. Clipped thoughts now—only necessary ones.

_Zsasz, knife. Stephanie, vulnerable. _

_Within thirty feet. _

_In the name of your father, RUN. _

He roars Stephanie's name and she turns suddenly, staring at him with huge, turquoise eyes. Her arms are covering her core, protecting the swoop of her pregnant belly.

Damian's lips and throat go dry, as he sees the blood inching down from the corner of her mouth. It's shockingly crimson against the stark white pallor of her skin.

Zsasz laughs—a shrill sound that somehow reminds Damian of crunching bones.

"You left," Stephanie whispers as he reaches her, as he grabs both of her shoulders and stares at her with all the cool composure of a madman. He must be truly frightening, his eyes bloodshot and the cowl covering the majority of his facial features. But she doesn't look afraid of him—just sad.

"What are you _DOING _out here?" he demands of her, trying not to shake her, trying not to choke on his own words. Doesn't she understand what this _does _to him? Doesn't she understand how much this _scares _him, how much he's already been worried about her? And now she goes and practically _throws _herself in Crime Alley like an oblivious child?

"You left," she repeats, and now she looks accusing.

"I left—" He stops, as he remembers the scarf. An unknown compulsion—call it intuition, which Damian didn't believe in until tonight—makes him wrap his gloved fingers around it. And pull.

It falls away from her neck with ease, revealing what it was hiding.

A maze of intersecting and criss-crossed hatch marks—fresh ones—cover her neck and seep down towards her chest, overflowing onto her collar bones and scathing the swell of her breasts.

It's everything Damian can do not to vomit.

His throat works but nothing comes out of his lips. He can't think, can't process. It doesn't make any sense, none of this makes any—

"I'm sorry, D," she whispers, and this time her eyes are back to being sad. There's a glint of something else, but he doesn't know what.

And then she's gone.

One second, his fingers were wrapped around her biceps, and now she's gone. Just vanished, before his eyes.

He staggers backward, almost losing his footing, his mind racing and his breath working his diaphragm into something ridiculous. He whirls on Zsasz, his eyes livid and fists curled. The animal is sitting several feet away, wiping blood from his face and grinning at Damian with crooked teeth.

Damian grabs him by the collar and throws him against the wall, shoving his fist beneath the animal's chin and pressing against his windpipe. Enough to hurt, but not enough to prevent him from speaking.

"_WHERE IS SHE?" _The voice of Batman screams from the cowl, the deep reverberations of Bruce Wayne's vocal cords emitted from Damian's.

There is no control here.

"Find out for yourself," Zsasz says, his voice rough and hoarse but unmistakably gleeful. He points again. This time, he points behind Damian, beyond him.

Damian whirls around, a man on fire, stripped of his pragmatic sense of well-being and left only with the rusted interiors. This is ludicrous. This is unreal. Stephanie can't have been here, she was at the hospital, people don't just vanish into thin air—at least normal humans don't. Zsasz can't have carved her up so terribly, she would have fought back, she would have—this isn't—

It's a church. Zsasz is pointing at a church.

A haunting familiarity sends gooseflesh rippling down Damian's arms and legs.

The church is not particularly exceptional—it isn't the Sistine Chapel and it isn't even Gotham Evangelical. It's smaller, with long, stained glass windows, depicting Mary and Joseph and Noah and Moses and Daniel in the lion's den. It's dark-washed, with grey stone and granite, dotted with little statues, flooded with shadow. At the top, a cross stretches its tip towards the sky.

A cross that is illuminated by the BatSignal.

Damian, for one of the very few times in his life, ignores the signal. Whoever needs him right now can wait. Instead, he focuses on the light which skirts the edges of the cross, and finds what he knew the light would reveal: there's a door up there.

He charges forward for no reason—a reprehensible act, if he were in his right mind. But he isn't. He hasn't been in his right mind since he left the hospital, since he left Stephanie's side, and now he's only gone steadier downhill.

"I saved her!" Zsasz shouts as Damian throws him aside, kicks him in the gut and ties him to a light post with his line. "_I SAVED HER! _You tried to ruin her, Batman! But I saved her!" Then he's laughing—not a maniacal Joker laugh, but an exhausted, almost choking laugh. "I saved her. I did."

Damian thrusts the doors of the church open, finding them unlocked and the church deserted. The pews are empty, the hymnals all tucked into place like sleeping babies. Stephanie's in here. Zsasz sent her here, Damian knows it. God knows how he did it, but he did.

There's a lone candle sitting on the altar, and its tiny flame flips and curls as Batman rushes by, his cape trailing behind.

All he can think about are those hatch marks. There was blood dripping down her skin, flooding down her neck like a forsaken waterfall. Her lips were turning blue, her windpipe slashed, her throat disconnected. How could she talk? It wasn't scientifically possible, there was too much blood, too many cut muscles.

How did Zsasz _get _to her? She was lying in bed, as dead asleep as a teenager who just finished her last-minute finals study session. She had her utility belt with her—there were plenty of tools she could have used to defend herself. How could Zsasz tear her up so cruelly, without gaining a single scratch himself?

Just that awful, jagged gash along his forearm. And that one, Damian knew, was self-inflicted.

He can't breathe.

He takes the stairs three at a time, thankful for his long legs, and tackles the remaining staircase by using his grappling hook and flying up to the top level.

The door. There's a door here, he just—

There. It's three feet to his right, a giant oaken door with black metal hinges. His fingers reach for it as if drawn by magnetism, an invisible force, and he closes them around the doorknob.

There's a cry in the dark, as his fist crunches the iron.

He twists and pulls.


	2. Part 2: Mirrors and Motivation

The door swings open on noisy, maddening hinges.

A second passes where nothing happens at all. Damian is left standing there in silence, groping at the door of a tiny church, staring into oblivion. His boots remained glued to the floorboards, the Batsuit's cape a deadweight against the ground.

And then he's blinded.

Every sense is overwhelmed by intense, fluorescent light that cuts off his vision and burns his retinas. Given his past experiences, he knows the "explosion of light" gig is rarely a good one. It means that reality has become flimsy, in one way or another.

Not that it didn't already seem a little questionable.

He steps forward, raising his hands to shield his eyes, trying to call out for the girl he's afraid he's lost. She has to be beyond this point, he's sure of it. She has to be close, because what will he do if she isn't?

His mind races, before the smell of antiseptic hits him like a truck.

_No. _

The unholy amount of white, incandescent light slowly fades to colors and moving shapes. A high-pitched ringing deepens and becomes the steady beep of a heart monitor, keeping time with someone's exploding pulse. A nails-on-chalkboard shrieking lowers and becomes the squeaking of moving wheels across a tile floor. The sounds of whistling clear and become the uneven gasps of a human being.

Damian is back in the hospital.

He's back in the hospital, he's still wearing Dick's suit and he hasn't the slightest idea how he got here.

But one shudder-inducing scream makes him not care.

_Stephanie._

She's here and she isn't lined with the hatch marks of Zsasz's rusted pocket knife.

But she _is _being pushed down the hospital hallway on a stiff mattress, surrounded by nurses wearing masks over their mouths and gloves over their fingers, and she's shouting in absolute agony.

It takes about two seconds for his circulation to start coursing again, for the adrenaline to reboot his system and hotwire his tendons.

Several women yelp in fright as he thrusts forward after the travelling mattress, shoving aside anyone and anything that gets in his way. This night has made no sense ever since he left the hospital room window, and the stubborn side of his "sensible" manner makes him wonder how much more he can take. Batman rampaging through a hospital after a young pregnant blonde, while having just seen that same young pregnant blonde carved to pieces in front of a Gotham church, isn't exactly the daily quota he's accustomed to.

Oh, and that same Gotham church? Yeah, he just teleported from it. Or _something _like that.

Another scream and he dismisses everything as nonsense. Too little sleep, too many hours away from the Cave, too much stress over the pregnancy. Maybe leftovers from Scarecrow's fear toxin. _They_ must have caused the earlier visions, because _this_—this right here—is real. It has to be.

It's real, and it's Damian's worst nightmare come to life.

He catches up with Stephanie and her team of nurses and bellows at one of them, certain that the whole world has gone legitimately up in flames. "What happened?" he demands, resisting the almost overpowering urge to grab the nurse and shove her against the wall.

But she's too busy opening and closing her mouth in shock, tripping as she tries to run alongside the moving mattress. "_Batman?"_ her lips mouth, but nothing comes from the depths of her throat.

Stephanie cries out again and Damian's had enough. He pushes the nurse out of the way and takes Stephanie's hand, staring at the other nurse from across the mattress and seething. "Answer the _damn_ question or I'll—"

This nurse recognizes a threat when she sees one. Thank God. "We—we think there's something wrong with the baby," she immediately replies, cutting him off and explaining as much as she can. "We don't know _what_, but Miss Brown went into preterm labor again and we're taking her to the OR for an emergency caesarean section." She pauses, then decides it may be safe to ask. "Batman, can I ask why you—"

But Damian stopped listening as soon as he heard "c-section."

Stephanie needs a c-section. That shouldn't sound so awful, but Damian isn't thinking it's just going to _be_ a c-section. There is something horribly, awfully wrong here and no one knows what it is.

Stephanie stares up at him, her face drenched in beads of sweat that fall down her cheeks like tears. Her hair is matted against her scalp and sticks to her forehead in clumps of blonde-turned-brown from perspiration. Her eyes are as bright and blue as ever, but they're drooping and they're scared.

Her lips meld into a soft, exhausted smile. "You're still wearing the cowl, D." Normally, she would be concerned about this. Normally _he _would too. But it's been established ten times over that this is far from a normal situation.

"Hush. You should have alerted me immediately," he says in his regular, Damian Wayne voice, albeit strained and frightened.

Fear. Huh. It's an odd thing, coming from his vocal chords.

"I couldn't. It was sudden. She—" Stephanie winces and convulses, drawing her legs up in an almost protective instinct over her core. After a moment, she relaxes, but only slightly. Damian watches this helplessly, like a child watching a bank robbery or a back alley mugging.

"She really wants out, that's all," the woman who was once Batgirl continues, laughing weakly. "This one's a little beast, just like her old man."

"It's probably why Mother put me in a tube," Damian replies, but he can't find the heart to put humor in his tone. This isn't funny. This is heart-stopping.

"Probably," Stephanie agrees and tries to grin but can't, because she's shouting again. Her hand squeezes his to the point that it grinds bones together, and Damian grits his teeth to resist pulling away. He doesn't want to let go. He can't let go. He'll lose her if he lets go.

Tears squeeze their way out of Stephanie's eyes in fat drops and she lies flat against the mattress again, as they round a corner and start heading towards the OR doors at the end of the hallway. He's never heard her breathe like this before, in such an uncontrolled, unnatural pattern. He scans her body, as if that will somehow help him solve the problem.

The blood seeping into the white cotton of the mattress nearly turns his feet to lead.

"Stephanie," he whispers, as the crimson spreads and stretches, clawing for more fabric to taint. "Talk to me, Stephanie." He desperately looks up at her, but her eyelids are falling.

"Can't," she mumbles. "Can't, have to…focus…"

No. No, no, no. He won't lose her.

"You listen to me, Stephanie Brown," he says between clenched teeth, gripping her wrists and squeezing. "You listen to me. You are fine. You have always been fine. You are an arrogant shrew of a woman, and you have twice the strength and stamina of any female in this room. You are the only one who could ever go toe to toe with me, optimism versus pessimism. You are stronger than this. I—" He turns and shouts at the nurse, who's looking down at Stephanie with something akin to horror. "_DO something!" _he roars, practically spitting at the poor lady. She looks about ready to burst into tears, so she starts fiddling with the heart monitor and IV drip and, really, does absolutely nothing to help.

"Damian, _stop_," Stephanie orders, and even in this weakened position, her voice carries that imperious command that he has come to love over the past few months. Like she's going to get what she wants and doesn't care what anyone else says. "Stop yelling at her. She's doing the best she can. It's me, I'm not—" She hesitates, conflicted. "I was never good at carrying kids. You knew that, Tim knew that—"

"Drake has nothing to do with this!" Damian shouts, his heart pounding. "This is our child, not his, and you are going to be fine. You aren't a child any more, you are a fully grown woman. A fully grown, capable woman. You are going to have a c-section and the nurses are going to—"

She shakes her head and the blood seeps further, reaching the place where her knees touch the cloth.

"I'm so sorry, D," she whispers, and he's truly never seen her look so apologetic. It reaches her eyes in a way that only a few emotions can, and he shuts his mouth, defeated. "I really tried hard this time, I promise," she tells him. "I really tried hard. I didn't want a repeat of me and Tim."

Damian doesn't know which she's talking about—her and Drake with the pregnancy, or her and Drake with their _relationship_.

Maybe both.

Tim and Stephanie are something Damian rarely likes to touch upon. First of all, he doesn't like the idea of his Pretty Pretty Princess older brother getting to Stephanie before him. He also doesn't like the idea of Tim's thin, chapped lips against Stephanie's full, beautiful ones, but that's just a by-product of jealousy.

Most of all, he doesn't like that Tim was there for Stephanie's first pregnancy. Tim was there through, arguably, one of Stephanie's hardest times, when she was left knocked up by some Gotham jerk who ran away after the earthquake. Tim took her to Lamaze classes and held her hand through the whole thing. He knew what cravings she had, he knew her pregnancy mannerisms, he knew what she was like when she was young and healthy and glowing with a round belly and crooked grin.

And he never would have left her, the way Damian did today.

The shame sends acid churning through his stomach.

"This is not a repeat," he tells her. He wonders where all his cool confidence has gone, as he slips further and further into something akin to hysteria. Of course, Damian hysteria isn't your typical hysteria. There isn't any hyperventilation or rapid-fire tears. Just a growing confusion and frustrated vulnerability. "This time will be different. In a few hours, you will have a perfectly healthy infant in your arms and I will not put her up for adoption, because she is our child. She is—"

"She's Laila," Stephanie interrupts quietly, and her lips—which have gone blue—smile yet again.

This catches him off guard. They haven't really discussed names up to this point—he always expected Stephanie would just come up with a good one when the time came. But, here she is, completely sure about a name he's never even heard her consider.

"Laila?"

"Laila. It means 'the night'. I thought that was," she clenches her teeth again, another tear chasing its way across her cheekbone and disappearing into the stained sheets, "kinda clever. Y'know, considering our background and everything."

"Yes. Kinda clever," he replies, but he's paying more attention to her working throat and blue lips than he is to her level of cunning.

A quiet shriek gasps its way through Stephanie's mouth and she presses her head back against the sweat-soaked pillow. The nurses thrust the mattress through the OR doors and Batman follows because he's Batman and this is who he loves. No one objects to that. No one dares to.

"So…I want you to remember that, okay?" Steph continues after a few haggard breaths. "Laila. Spelled L-A-I-L-A, no stupid 'y's or anything like that. And I want you to take her fishing, because I want her to be a kickass little tomboy like Cass."

"She will be," Damian reassures. Because he has to. What else can he say?

"She's gonna be so beautiful, D," Steph says, her voice suddenly pleased and dream-like. "You're absolutely going to love her. I know you will."

Her body spasms as she coughs, chokes, and reacts to pain simultaneously. But she's back at the races within seconds, chattering away. Classic Stephanie. So classic it's like a stab in the gut, another reminder of all the reasons why Damian has grown so fond of this impotent, impossible, infantile woman.

"You're going to love her so much. I know you're worried about being the Daddy of the house, but I think you're gonna do great," Stephanie reassures him. "You're a lot more easily attached to things then you like to admit, so I think you'll be fine. Dick would be really proud of you," she adds as almost a side-comment, glancing down at his suit.

She recognizes it as Dick's. Probably recognized it several minutes ago.

Damian tries to say something but can't.

"You're going to love her," she repeats again, her voice softer this time. "_So_ much, D."

They're setting Stephanie up for surgery, rustling around her and trying to put things into place, as the blood trickles past her feet now. Her face has gone ghostly white and is still laden with sweat. Her voice is almost an indeterminable whisper, her eyelids heavy over her turquoise irises.

"Shh. Look at me, Stephanie. Look."

"Can't," she says sadly. "Can't now."

"_Please._"

"Why did you leave, Dami? All you left was that letter."

"I had to leave. I thought it was—I didn't think this would—" He stops.

God, why is it suddenly so hard to talk? He's always had a knack for finding the right words, for wheedling past annoying society women or the GCPD cops. He's always had a sharp, cruel comeback at the ready, a fresh retort for every day's meal.

So why is it so hard now? Why can't he just talk to her the way he always has?

"I saw you, Stephanie, in front of a Gotham church," he finally continues. "Zsasz was there, and he—"

"I believed you would come back sooner, you know," she tells him, searching his face. "And save the day, just in time. I always believed that."

"I'm here now."

She shakes her head slowly, her eyes rolling to stare up at the ceiling. Absent. "Yeah, bud. You're here now. When everything's up in flames and everyone's gone out-of-their-mind bonkers. That's when you like to show up."

"It's what I'm used to." And there's real honesty in his voice, because it's true. It's what he's used to. He doesn't know any better.

He's not sure he ever _will _know any better. But that's his life. He's a paper plane in Gotham's grey sky morning—he tries to soar over the currents, but there's going to be a time, now and again, when gravity pulls him down. He's the immortal Batman, who can't be there to save the only girl he ever loved.

Stephanie's fading. A shrill ghost of a scream rises from her chest again and she contorts, her muscles flinching.

He squeezes her hand tighter and draws it to his lips, kissing the soft skin of her knuckles. "Stephanie, _please_." The pleading in his voice is awful. It's weak, it's pathetic, and it's everything he's worked for years to rid himself of. And it's the only thing that feels genuine.

"You're going to love her," she says once again, and turns her sweating face to look directly at him. He's bent his knees now and his chin is pressed against the mattress, holding her hand to his nose.

"Stop saying that," he commands, trying to sound so much stronger than he feels. "_We _are going to love her. The two of us. Together, as her rightful, biological parents, we will have the duty of raising this—"

When she shakes her head, he breaks down. He leans forward, his teeth gritted in some sort of interior, unbearable pain. His lips brush her cheek as his body turns to stone, his blood to ice, his fingers thin rods gripping a dying figure.

He desperately reaches for the object in his utility belt, the one that he safely tucked away earlier, somehow knowing he would need it sooner rather than later. He digs through the pocket and tries to close his fingertips around the tiny object's smooth surface.

But Stephanie's already fading again, her eyelashes wet with tears, her body going limp, her skin slowly melting into translucence, with everything else in the scene around them. Damian no longer hears anything. The beeping of the heart monitor stops, the voices of the bustling doctors and nurses quiet, the OR doors opening and closing make no sound. They all fade away into darkness, and Stephanie begins to do the same.

"Stephanie, I need to ask you—" He starts, finally closing his fist around the object and bringing it forward in his palm. "I _want_ to ask you and I deeply regret that I haven't yet. This—you—"

Her voice is almost inaudible, but he leans in close. She whispers, and somehow her voice is warm and full of life, in spite of absolutely everything that's happened.

"I know, Damian. _Ya rohi."_

She smiles one last time, and then disappears completely.

* * *

><p>He's left on a cold, colorless floor with his head hanging and his fists clenched around nothing but air. Air and the tiny object that he was never able to give Stephanie. Because Stephanie is gone, and he realizes now what he didn't realize before.<p>

This is a dream. This has _all _been a dream.

Somewhere, his real body is sleeping. In some outrageously expensive bed, no doubt. Wishing, wondering, and dreaming of the "what ifs." The "might have beens."

Stephanie is dead. She's been dead for three years now, brutally murdered by Victor Zsasz, who had "found God" and was trying to save her from damnation through the slash of a knife. Damian found her nailed to a cross in the same church he searched in the dream.

She was pregnant at the time. Four months pregnant with Laila, the beautiful baby girl he was going to love. Who he will never lay eyes upon.

He weakly raises his head. His face is drained of color, his arms shaking with rage, confusion, and exhaustion.

So where is he now? The dream has sent him through another portal, and this new scene is completely devoid of life—it's stark white and it's completely empty.

Is this life for him now? Without Stephanie, the eternally optimistic, infuriatingly perfect constant?

He drops his head again and figures he'll stay here. There's nowhere else to go.

God, it's quiet.

Seconds pass. Or maybe months. Heck, they could be years, but Damian doubts it. Years pass by so slowly. Love can be so boring.

Silently, he waits for whatever this aspect of the dream will give him. He's like Scrooge waiting for the next Ghost, like Moses waiting for the next sign from God. Sitting and bearing the pain, knowing it's unavoidable, an immovable barrier, and he has no control.

Damian has never had control, and he's just now beginning to see that.

It takes a while, but he slowly begins to hear voices. They're quiet at first, little whispers of inflection and high-pitched tone quality. Feminine breaths, little spurts of words and phrases that don't coalesce for another few moments.

Finally, he starts to understand them. And he isn't surprised when they're all the voice of Stephanie.

"_Come here, Laila! Sweetie, you have to get out of the mud. You're ruining the hideous dress Daddy bought for you."_

"_Get out of the water, baby. Come here. Come to Mama. That's a good girl."_

"_Laila, how many times have I told you? You can't punch the boys at school. Even when they're mean to Caddoc. And even if they deserve it."_

Each voice is a different moment in time, a different stage of Stephanie's life. A different stage of _Laila's _life.

"_Merry Christmas, Lai!"_

"_You look beautiful, sweetheart. Have I ever told you that you look like your grandma? She was a beautiful woman. You should ask Daddy about her sometime."_

"_Laila! Rosie! Not too far, okay? Mama's getting too old for all this running around. Kickin' ass as Batgirl was kinda a freakishly long time ago."_

"_Hmm…bedtime stories? Okay…Lai, did I ever tell you the story about your dad and Uncle Dick? The one where they dressed up as Asian fisherman and helped Catwoman catch a man named Thomas Elliot? Well, it started on a clear night, not unlike this one…"_

"_Damian! Damian, she's crying again. She won't stop. I've been up since 3 AM, will you please, for the love of all things good and holy, let me go to sleep? Because I will legitimately tear up everything in this house and I will kick Alfred out and sleep in his box if it means getting away from this screaming child."_

"_Laila. Oh, Uncle Jay let you get a tattoo, huh? Yeah, did he ask Mama if you could get a tattoo? No, he didn't. Yeah, he'll be hearing about this later. He'll be hearing a _lot _about this later."_

"_Damian. Shh, come here. She's sleeping. Look, she stole your cowl. Can you believe she's sleeping with your _cowl_? I'm not sure if that's hilarious or adorable. Or weird. Probably all three."_

Moments that Damian will never get back. Will never experience.

He slowly stands up, as the voices curl around him, scene after scene after scene, moment after moment, each one a prize that he wants as desperately as he wants the next.

This is too much. Batman was built to take anything. But not Damian. He can take being cooked alive by fire, he can take making a deal with the devil, but he can't take this. He can't take losing Stephanie _and_ Laila.

And suddenly he's surrounded. Completely surrounded by twenty different versions of his daughter, standing around him in an oblong oval, looking at him with his own eyes.

And, Stephanie was right. She's absolutely gorgeous.

On his right is Laila as a toddler, sitting with her already-long black hair brushing the floor and a pacifier hanging loosely from her lips. On the left is Laila as a nine-year-old, clutching a version of _Harry Potter _and chewing on the inside of her cheek as she reads. Behind him is Laila as a preteen, dressed in a fashion so utterly like Stephanie's typical style that Damian's gut wrenches. She's clutching a backpack and digging through the thing with all the grace of her mother, throwing about ten items as she searches for a piece of candy.

And in front of him, highlighted beyond all the other ones, is Laila as a teenager.

She is truly beautiful. Every father thinks his daughter is lovely, but this is something different. Laila is stunning. Her black hair falls gracefully down over her shoulders, accented by a stubborn wave. Her eyes are sharp and dark blue, her skin a slightly lighter copy of his own. She wears jeans and a Gotham University t-shirt, as casual and as elegant as her mother. But a scar cuts over the edge of her left eyebrow, matching the ones on her muscular arms.

He can practically _hear _her say, "Tt."

She walks towards him, and tears are slipping silently down his face. He can't control them anymore. He doesn't wipe them away. He pushes away the shame and lets them fall down his cheeks, onto the blank, endless floor.

She walks until they are only inches apart. He wants so badly to reach out and touch her, to say something, to be her father, to act like her father—but he's frozen. He doesn't know what to do, and doesn't know if he _can _do anything.

She smiles at him in the exact way Stephanie always did, when things were maniacal and life clawed at them with its relentless scissor cuts. When it just didn't matter, because they were in some kind of love, and somehow it would be alright.

Laila looks up at him, already tall for her age, watching as her father—the undying machine—is tortured from the inside out.

"It's okay, Dad."

She reaches up and presses her hand against his face.

He lets his eyes close, knowing this will be the last and the only time he will ever feel his daughter. He won't ever know her baby fingers or her adult laugh. He won't ever be cared for by her, when he is too old to move from bed to bath to table. She is trapped here, in the cover of his dreams.

"_Ya rohi," _he whispers, repeating the Arabic he was taught as a child, the Arabic he tried to teach to Stephanie when sitting around the Batcave became a little too monotonous. But the woman had never been the studious type, and she only picked up on a few simple phrases. _Ya rohi_—my soul—was one of them.

Laila's voice softens, as she whispers back, "_Dae'man_." Forever.

She wraps her arms around him, with all the solemn gentleness of a mother that Damian never knew. And as she does such, she reaches forward, closing her fingers softly around the side of his cheek.

She rips the cowl from his face.

And, finally, he's free.

* * *

><p>When he wakes, it's a grey sky morning.<p>

He stares up at the ceiling, lying in the too-soft silken sheets that used to be replaced every evening by Alfred the butler. Now they are clawed and tattered by Alfred the cat, who only exhausts his game on days like today.

He knows what this day is.

It's September 7th, the three-year anniversary of Stephanie's death. Which is likely why Damian slept so restlessly, but slept so vividly. He stares out the window blankly, knowing this day will be impossible to get through. But he'll get through it anyway. Just like he always does.

He dresses formally, in a well-fitted day suit with a blue tie that matches and accentuates his eyes. He straightens the tie in his father's old full-length mirror that's grown dusty over the years.

The small object is still in his pocket, exactly where he left it.

Alfred knows what today will bring. So he jumps up onto Damian's shoulder, licks his master's ear, headbutts the side of his neck, and rides along with him as he walks down to the car.

It's a busy day, as it always is. They start off with service at the church where Stephanie was murdered, sitting in a pew with a bunch of strangers, looking up at the cross of a Savior. Damian always listens to the sermon. He doesn't understand all of it, but he always listens.

He keeps his eyes away from the great oaken door in the rafters. He's seen enough of it in fantasy, to know to stay away in reality. It's true, he isn't sure it hides anything besides a dark, spider-filled attic. But he isn't going to take any chances. Not today.

People are always surprised to see Damian Wayne, son of the late Bruce Wayne, owner of Wayne Enterprises, at a tiny church on such a random date, but the pastor always seems pleased enough. And the sermons are always fine. They aren't full of hypocritical accusations or demonstrative waving of the hands. They're simple, they're precise. They're the kind of speech Stephanie would have liked, and so Damian listens.

Sometimes, he prays. It's a strange concept to him, and it never feels exactly comfortable. He doesn't know if he believes in God, although he sometimes finds himself wanting to. God might make things easier, might make a light on the path a little more likely. But it's so hard to say, so hard to believe.

But he folds his hands together and listens to the pastor go on about health and welfare for Gotham and its people. Damian rarely throws his own input into the prayer, but when he does, it's always the same:

_Help her, God. Help her and help me._

No upstanding vocabulary. No well-turned phrases or happy metaphors. Just the simplest request he can make.

God never gives a direct answer. But Damian isn't sure he wants one anyway.

He stays sitting in the pew long after the sermon is finished, and the church has gone quiet.

He goes on.

He travels to Kelly's Floral and buys a bouquet of roses. Alfred always picks them out, walking amongst the flowers with the tip of his tail twitching against the petals. Of course everyone thinks Damian has gone a little insane—people see you taking a cat to church, taking a cat to go buy flowers, and they're going to assume you're a little unstable. But Damian's stopped caring what the public thinks, and he's stopped pretending like Alfred isn't much more than a cat.

He doesn't patrol, not under any circumstances. Patrol almost always leads to some kind of violence, and Damian can't risk that. Not today. It's too likely that he would lose control, that he would see Zsasz's face in the eyes of a jewelry thief, and would simply beat the man to a bloody pulp without even thinking.

Instead, he and Jason have a silent agreement. Todd claims the streets tonight, so long as he packs away the big guns and takes care of business quietly. He lets Damian mourn and he lets Damian mourn without bothering him, which Damian is thankful for. He can't be around the others. Tim tried to connect with him for the first couple years, but gave up after a long string of unreturned phone calls, texts and emails. Cassandra took off into the wind one day, which Damian understood and respected. Jason was the only one who really stuck around, but he never tried to help Damian back onto his feet. Jason was acutely aware that, for Damian, his feet didn't really _exist _anymore.

So he wanders the September streets and sips on coffee and buys the newspaper but doesn't read it. He stares at the clouds and lets Gotham dance around him.

Day passes to night on the same melting canvas of grey sky. As the lights start to pop on, one by one, he makes his way to the cemetery. It's always deserted, as if people are expecting Damian, knowing that he will need to be alone.

The cemetery is nothing special. It's a typical one, dotted with sporadically-placed headstones depicting the names of people Damian's never heard of. But they're Gothamites and Stephanie was a Gothamite, so she belongs here. It suits her.

Her grave is at the back of the cemetery, surrounded by a patch of fresh green clover. He likes how far it is from the entrance. It means a long walk to her, a process where he can take a few deep breaths before he has to read her name again, written across a stone in chilling, determined, unchangeable letters.

He gets there eventually, though. He always does.

Then he stands and talks to her. He puts his hands in his pockets and talks for as long as three hours, with Alfred curling between his legs and brushing against his boots. He tells Stephanie how quiet everything is without her. He tells her that he used to like quiet, but now it's almost painful.

He tells her that he finally watched that movie she wanted him to see, the Disney one with the old man and all the balloons. He says it was a downright stupid suggestion and she should be ashamed to believe such an outrageous tale.

He tells her about the Joker and Selina Kyle, who's still in town, believe it or not.

He tells her he's doing alright, and he exaggerates a bit. But that's only to make himself feel better—the last thing he wants is pity from anyone. He brought this upon himself and he knows it.

After a few hours of this one-sided conversation, he takes the small object from his pocket and he sets it on the gravestone.

"I love you, Stephanie Brown," he says and he means it, even if perhaps now it's too late.

The object is a ring. A cheap one, as per usual.

It's from Kay's. Damian always gets the ring from Kay's. He goes every year, buying Stephanie another ring, because he failed to give her one when he could. He always meant to, but the right moment never came. And then he lost the chance forever.

So he goes to Kay's and buys her a new one each year. He goes to Kay's because it was Stephanie's favorite commercial jingle—she would run up the stairs all the time, trilling "_Every kiss begins with Kay" _while watching "Gossip Girl" or some other nonsense on television. And, though he never admitted it, her humming always made Damian smile. Part of it was certainly that the poor woman couldn't sing to save her life. But part of it was that it was just so _Stephanie, _and Damian loved just about anything that was "Stephanie."

It's funny, how each year, he manages to find her a perfect ring. He could afford one that's worth three times as much, but he always finds the perfect one at Kay's. A thousand perfect rings, to make up for the thousand perfect opportunities that he missed.

Then he talks a little more. He talks about nothing, but that's fine by him, because he knows that's what Stephanie used to do. She would babble for hours on end, just like Dick, so opposite of Damian's father.

And it's only after a while that something finally interrupts him. Something usually does interrupt him, but this time it's a little different.

This time, it's the light voice of a young girl.

Alfred hisses softly from his place near the gravestone, as the timid voice decides to speak.

"Um, Mister? Are you…are you alright?"

Damian cuts off mid-sentence, halfway through telling Stephanie about an insipid editorial he read in the Gotham Gazette. He can't help the hand that works its way to his armed belt, as he slowly turns to look at his interruption.

It's a girl, yes. A girl who's only been on this earth for perhaps eight years.

And, at first, she looks so much like Laila that his heart skips several beats.

She's a small thing, around four feet tall, with dark hair and familiar blue eyes. Her skin is lighter than Laila's, however, much more Caucasian than Laila's dark Middle Eastern. She's wearing a navy dress that settles right above her knees, and a pair of tall, mismatched, black and white socks underneath suede rain boots.

"Who are you?" he asks, and he can't help the coldness that creeps into his voice. Today is not a good day for him to be visited. Not by anyone.

"My name's Rayne, but I'm not really supposed to talk to strangers."

"Excellent. Then don't."

"But I just—" She protests, breaking her rule yet again. "You looked lonely, and I thought you were talking to someone—"

"I was."

She blinks and her eyebrows furrow. She's utterly puzzled, and another pang of familiarity hits him. He doesn't know why.

"Who?" she asks, and her eyes float around, playing detective with empty spaces and shadows.

"My wife," he replies and turns back to the grave.

Alfred has been curled around the headstone this whole time, staring solemnly at the grey letters, but now he glances over at Rayne, his cat eyes keen and knowing.

"Where is she?" The little girl asks. She walks up to stand beside him, looking up at him with big, innocent eyes that glint in the moonlight.

"Here." He nods towards the gravestone and says nothing more.

"Oh."

Silence. Around a minute passes, and Damian appreciates that Rayne at least respects a mourning process. She's somewhat smart then. Good.

"Look, someone left another ring," she finally says after a while, and bends down, tenderly picking up the silver accessory on the gravestone. "This one's really pretty. It's from Kay's, I think." She chews on the edge of her tongue as Damian regards her, this little stranger who is manhandling his wife's wedding ring.

"Yes, it's from Kay's."

"I like it a lot."

"Good." And Damian, however irked, means it. He likes that another person approves of this ring choice for Stephanie, even if that other person is a stranger and a child.

"There are rings here every year, you know?" Rayne tells him, gently putting the ring back in its place, next to a curl of grass. "Someone always leaves a new ring for your wife." She glances up at him out of the corner of her eye, knowing fully well that she's _talking_ to that very "someone."

"Yes, I know."

"I felt bad after I took the first one. But it was just so pretty, I couldn't help it," Rayne says, a little sheepishly. She slowly stands up and pulls at her shirt, tugging a necklace chain out from underneath the stitched cotton. She brings it up until the chain is fully revealed. Hanging at the end is a different silver wedding ring.

A silver wedding ring, worth a fortune, laced with tiny diamonds in looping patterns, etching across a large clear gem that's in the shape of a pearl.

Martha Wayne's silver wedding ring. His_ grandmother's_ silver wedding ring.

It was the first ring Damian brought here. It was the ring Damian kept in his pocket for so many months before Stephanie ran away, always wanting to ask her to marry him, but never knowing when he could. Part of him was afraid of how she would respond. Another part was afraid of the commitment. Yet another side of him just didn't know _how _to ask—how to be that dependant on someone else's reply.

So when he finally lost his chance, he brought the ring here. And ever since then, he's brought a new one.

And it appears that Martha Wayne's ring now belongs to a little girl.

"I didn't mean to steal it, and I know I shouldn't have. I just…it felt really special, y'know?" She smiles, looking more than a little embarrassed. She knows that she stole the ring from Damian, and is searching for some sort of excuse. Her eyelashes flutter and the smile fades. "So I put it on a chain and decided I would come back here every year with a rose from Wilson's. And then, maybe, after a lot of years, I would pay off the ring by buying all those roses." She pauses, pursing her lips and thinking. "I hope your wife likes roses."

The way Rayne says the sentence in the present tense, as if Stephanie were still alive and breathing, sends another ripple down his spine. He grits his teeth and says, almost incoherently, "Yes. She likes roses."

Rayne beams. "I'm glad. Mom likes roses a lot, so I only hoped."

"Who did you say your mother is?" Damian asks, and the newfound gentleness in his tone surprises even himself. There's something about this girl, something familiar, beyond the fact that she reminds him of Laila.

Rayne bites the edge of her lip and stares at her feet. "I can't really say. Mom says I can't tell her secret identity to anyone, especially not strangers."

Secret identity. So her mother is a Super.

Interesting.

It isn't surprising that he doesn't know the child then. He hasn't exactly been at every wedding, baby shower and family reunion since his father died. Stephanie's passing just made it worse. Damian's lost most contact with anyone outside of Gotham. The Teen Titans mean next to nothing to him, and he only accepts calls from the Justice League on a yearly basis. They don't need him and he knows it. They needed his father—not a broken, dilapidated, sick version of his father.

Still, he must know this child's parents, in some form or another. She looks too familiar for comfort. It's the eyes—the sharp, blue jean eyes are downright unnerving. Like a haunting figure from a dream.

And Damian's had quite enough of haunting dreams.

He bends down to her height, so that their noses are level. His face is already starting to show signs of age, even though it's only been 3 years since Zsasz's last trick, and Damian's still a very young man. But stress, sadness, loss of hope…they do cruel things to a person. And they've done twisted things to Damian.

But his eyes are still very convincing, even if they're tired.

"You can tell me," he says.

She looks back at him and opens her mouth for a moment, before closing it again. The amount of conflict etched across her face is almost comical.

He waits. The impotent child will tell him eventually.

"I—I can tell you my last name!" she suddenly says brightly. Her eyes shoot back up from where they've been grazing the ground, and she beams again.

He cocks a sardonic eyebrow, and resists the urge to twirl his fingers. _Go on_.

"Yes?"

She stands straight and puts on a self-satisfied smile, as if she's quite proud of whatever heritage and background she's swooped down from.

"Grayson," she chirps. "I'm Rayne Cassandra Grayson."

And, just like that, Damian's blood freezes all over again.

She immediately continues, paying no heed to his widened eyes.

"I mean, Mom has a different last name, but I still go by Daddy's name. Kinda as a memorial, I think." Her voice drops and she sighs. "You see, Daddy disappeared before I was born. He didn't _leave, _exactly,but…" She bites her lip. "It's hard to explain. Bad things happen to people like my mom and dad, because…they're..." She shakes her head, irritated that she can't come up with better words. "They're _special, _I guess. That's all I can really tell you." She looks up at him apologetically, her lower lip sticking out the slightest centimeter.

But it doesn't matter because Damian quit listening a minute ago. He's staring at this little girl in an entirely different light, because she's suddenly transformed before his eyes.

It makes sense now—all the odd familiarity he felt around her, all the strange things about her hair and body language that made him think of _déjà vu._

Because everything about her screams _Dick. _Her hair is the exact same ebony, so rare on a Caucasian figure. Her skin is the same light cream, and her eyes…well, they _are _Dick's. That's how Damian knows them. They have the exact same hopeful laughing glint to them, the same irritatingly optimistic sharpness, the same terrifying, pure blue.

But, damn it, it's _impossible. _

Dick never had a child, never had a daughter, and disappeared years ago. He disappeared, searching for a way to fix Damian's problem. To fix Damian's _damnation. _And, somewhere along the path, he was killed. He vanished like dust in the wind. Like Stephanie in Damian's dreams.

Dick wouldn't have left the baby. He would have told Damian he had a daughter. Even if that daughter was an accident—or _something_—he would have told Damian. Dick had a way about him; he would tell Damian everything, especially the things Damian didn't care about or didn't want to know.

Dick would have loved a daughter. He would have taken his daughter across the world on a tightrope, holding her high above his head and letting her laugh as she dangled precariously on the edge. And he would hold tight to her, never once letting her slip.

It's impossible.

Damian can't take this. Not today, on the anniversary of his love's death, the death that was his fault and that he'll never forgive himself for.

So he reaches forward and grabs the inane child by the arm, bringing her within an inch of his face. She stares up at him with huge, frightened, Dick Grayson eyes. He meets her with his own paire, the eyes of Bruce Wayne, the only irises that knew how to truly chill Dick Grayson's blood.

"_Stop_," he snarls, and he's shaking her. His thumbnails dig into the pale skin of her exposed arms. "I cannot physically handle any more of this. I have been haunted enough by the cruel devils of my wife's passing, and I refuse to be dragged into any more. You are _not_ Dick Grayson's daughter and this is _nothing _but another dream."

Her eyes flash back and forth across his face, desperate and confused. "But I—"

He shakes her again, once, whipping her head back and forth, making the tussle of dark hair on her head fly. Alfred mewls his disapproval at this situation, standing next to the grave, the fur on his back bristling. Damian ignores him.

"I am immaculate. I am immortal. I can and will heal from any graze, cut, shot, stab, or flesh wound. But I nothing more than a _man," _he says through clenched, grinding teeth._ "_I will _break_ if I am put through any more of this. I have to be—hell, I'm _already_ broken." He is wild, and Rayne gazes up at him, this man who is merely a ghost of who he once was.

"Can't you see that?" he exclaims. Another shake. "Can't you, for the love of _God, _see that I've had enough?" His face is contorted with pain, a sweat breaking out along his forehead. His canines spit into the little girl's face like the teeth of vampires.

A full minute passes and Rayne merely looks up at him, tears slowly cascading down her petite face. She's frightened—of course she is—but she hasn't fought back, hasn't tried to escape him.

And she hasn't disappeared. All of the others in the dreams have disappeared, but Rayne's arms remain tangible. Her skin is not translucent.

She isn't leaving.

"…How did you know my Daddy's name?" she whispers at length, searching his face for answers to his hysteria.

He drops her arm and turns away, his face growing grim and his shoulders sagging. This day is never-ending. It always is.

"Your father was an ally."

A pause. Rayne is still shaken, but her old inquisitiveness is creeping back. A moment longer, and she opens her mouth.

"Did you love him?"

It's a question only a child would ask, after so short a conversation. And it's the only question Damian can answer with some surety.

He exhales. "Yes."

She contemplates this and is silent.

"Are you done with your haunting, wench?" he asks, staring out into the night skyline of Gotham City. Jason is out there somewhere, fulfilling the evening duties of the Batman, in whatever twisted form pleases him most.

"I'm not a ghost," Rayne tells him. Her voice is louder, gaining confidence. She is very sure that she is not purely a figment of imagination.

"I came to this cemetery a long time ago," she says, when he doesn't respond. "I wanted to see if my Daddy's grave was here, because Mama never told me where it could be. I don't really think she knows."

A pause.

"You look kinda familiar," Rayne continues. She crosses her arms over her small chest and regards him with a cautious, raised eyebrow. "Have you ever been on TV?"

"Once or twice."

"Fox? CBS? Gotham News Network?"

He nods, figuring that will be sufficient answer. He's been on all three.

"Woah. I _knew _I'd seen you before." Her voice is a little less fearful now, a little more interested. "You, uh…well, you have an intimation factor. Lots of celebrities have that, Mama says."

_Intimidation factor, _Damian corrects internally. He's heard that one before.

"Was I usually with a young blonde woman?" he asks softly.

Rayne grins. "Yes. She was your wife, wasn't she?"

It takes a moment, but then Rayne remembers exactly what _happened _to that wife.

_Oh, _Her face reads. _Oh. That wife...that wife _died.

The grin disappears and she slowly turns back to the grave. For once, he doesn't follow her gaze. Instead, he studies the way she leans on her right leg rather than her left. The way she digs at the grass with the tip of her toe. The way she cups her hands in front of her. The way her eyelids droop with solemnity.

Childlike characteristics. Ones he might have seen on Laila's stronger, more-developed, darker-skinned body, had she lived.

The two of them stand there for several more minutes, Rayne studying the headstone with Dick's blue eyes, Damian wondering where he's supposed to go from here. He hasn't woken up yet. And, if he never does wake up, he'll have to assume this child—this strange, obnoxious, random child—is the daughter of his older brother. His one true mentor.

It only makes sense. It's about time his life turned upside down again, isn't it? It's been a few years.

Quietly, Rayne reaches into her windbreaker pocket and pulls out a handful of rose petals. White rose petals, freshly bought, like they're ready for a wedding. Or a funeral.

Raising her small fist, she sprinkles the petals over top of the headstone, watching as they drift back down to the dark earth.

"I like it when they fall," she says quietly. "It's like confetti at a New Year's Eve party."

Damian doesn't reply, but instead says his silent goodbye to the only love of his life. Stephanie's bones rest beneath his steel-toe boots, but he can only hope her soul is somewhere else. Somewhere far better. She deserves that much, at the very least.

"I know it's only September, mister…?"

"Wayne," Damian finishes. He remains looking at the headstone.

"Mister Wayne." Dick Grayson's daughter smiles. "It's only September, but my mama makes some really good hot chocolate. And, if you knew my dad…she'd probably like to talk to you." She prods at the ground with her toe again, looking shy. "Would you maybe like to come over? You're not really a stranger anymore."

It's been years since Damian has really "visited" anyone, especially the home of a child he's never before met. And normally he does everything alone on this anniversary. He goes to sleep very late, only after he's read every scrap of paper with Stephanie's handwriting on it, only after he's walked through her closet and tried to smell her on old sweaters and jeans, only after he's walked into the bathroom and stared at his reflection for far too long.

But the eyes of Dick Grayson are staring up at him pleadingly, and he won't say no again. Not this time.

He's made enough mistakes.

"Yes," is his only reply, and Rayne is grinning again, tickled pink by this odd man who she met in a tiny Gotham cemetery.

"My mama will like you," she says, and starts leading him forward, tugging at the sleeve of his coat. He lets her move him forward, as he glances back at the place where Stephanie lies.

He can practically hear her whisper, over years of time and the dimensions between life and death:

_Attaboy. Go get 'em, tiger._

And the caress of Laila's fingertips lingers against his cheek, as he looks back down at little Rayne, who is busy blabbing away about all sorts of nonsense, that is of absolutely no consequence to him. All sorts of nonsense that Dick Grayson would have chattered about endlessly, and it is for that reason that Damian follows the little girl.

And, as he's lead away into a starlit night on the anniversary of his love's death, he can't help but wonder. He can't help but think, as he watches the little boots with grass stains trot across the ground, as he sees the dark hair fly back and forth, as he listens to the awful pronunciation of an eight-year-old.

Perhaps, after all these years.

Perhaps he'll have a daughter after all.


End file.
